


Smart Ideas

by kirargent



Category: The Maze Runner (2014), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fluff, Snow, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirargent/pseuds/kirargent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teresa chases her.</p><p>What other option is there? Her honor has been tarnished. By wet socks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smart Ideas

**Author's Note:**

> For [runnieundies](http://runnieundies.tumblr.com)' and [merrygladers](http://merrygladers.tumblr.com)' tmrwishlists! They asked for "THE MOST GROSSLY FLUFFY BRENDERESA FICS YOU CAN COME UP WITH IDC IF THEY’RE DOMESTIC OR PARADISE AU’S WHERE TERESA IS ALIVE AND WELL I JUST NEED IT TO BE SO FUCKING FLUFFY" and "FLUFFY FICS/SHORT AU’s ABOUT TOTAL DORKS *coughs* thominewt *sneezes* brenderesa" respectively :)
> 
> This is unbetaed and not even self-edited, I'm sorry. Super fluffy though! I hope you both like it!
> 
> (background thominho is mentioned, if that's not your thing it's really just like one line.)

Teresa Agnes has seen Thomas's bare ass about ten too many times in her life.

Like, it was one thing when they were kids—they both ran around buck-naked all the time back then, and no one thought twice about it. But now? Now they're in college, and all Teresa wants is to peel off her snow-wet clothes and collapse into bed without being affronted with the sight and sounds of two naked boys having butt-sex on the bed next to hers.

She's pretty sure she saw one of Minho's discarded socks on _her_ bed before she slammed the door and fumed away. She's gonna hit that stupid Thomas the next time she sees his ugly face.

Teresa rages down the dorm hallway like a miniature blizzard trapped indoors, and pounds on the door at the end of the hall with her forearm.

The door opens. A girl is revealed, hanging onto the doorknob with one hand while she hops on one foot to finish pulling on a pair of sweatpants. Teresa catches a glimpse of purple underwear before they're covered up. A smile twitches her lips, but she shoves it down.

“My asshole roommate is having sex in my room,” she explains, lips dipping in a sour frown. “Can I sleep on your floor?”

The girl blinks her big, round eyes. “Oh,” she says. “Teresa, right?”

Teresa refuses to let a grin break her composure, even though her insides are doing the cha-cha and singing _Brenda knows my name! Brenda knows my name! Amazing gorgeous badass Brenda—Brenda knows my name!_ Teresa's face is the picture of coolness, because she is excellent at concealing her internal cute girl- related dance parties.

“Yep,” she says casually. She lets a small smile slip through. “That's me.”

“Okay,” Brenda says, nodding. “Sure.” She swings the door open wider, and Teresa steps inside with a grin. She is nothing if not an opportunist—she can make any situation work in her favor. Including sexile.

“You can take Jorge's bed,” Brenda says, flopping down onto one bed and gesturing at the other. “He won't be back till later. He's a loser old man, so his poker games are very important to him.”

Teresa nods, glancing around the room. It's small, like her room. Two beds, a window and a desk between them. One side of the room—Jorge's side—is neat and orderly, while on the other side, Brenda lounges on a bed surrounded by a shallow ocean of clothes and shoes and binders. The one thing that's hung on a hook with care, Teresa notices, is a long white lab coat.

“What's your major?” Teresa asks, sitting down on the edge of Jorge's bed. She uses her heels to kick her boots off, then peels off her wet socks by hand.

“Neuroscience,” Brenda states. “Why are you so wet?”

Teresa snorts. “Ultimate Frisbee in the snow. Not my smartest idea.”

Brenda looks ponderous. “No,” she decides, “that sounds fun, actually.” She shifts to lie on her side, propping her head on one hand. Her dark eyes are intent on Teresa's face, her eyebrows raised. “You have a lot of smart ideas like that?”

“I don't know,” Teresa says. She hesitates a second, then decides that heck, she's alone in a room with Brenda, screw it, and tugs her wet long sleeved shirt over her head. She shivers in just a tank top, but at least her arms will have a chance to dry. Brenda's eyes drag down her torso once before flicking back up to her eyes; Teresa grins. “If by 'smart' you mean ridiculous, then yes, I have loads of smart ideas.”

Brenda nods, looking at her appraisingly. “You should give me a call next time you're gonna play Ultimate in the snow.” She produces a red cell phone from somewhere underneath her blankets and throws it across the room. It lands beside Teresa with a thump. Teresa's heart jumps into her throat; she expresses her giddiness only with a slight smile.

“I'm pretty good, you know,” Brenda adds.

“Oh, I don't doubt it,” Teresa says sincerely.

Brenda is small, but she's a small package of tightly packed muscle and ferocity. She's ten men worth of strength and venom and wit crammed into a small container of light skin and short dark hair. Not that Teresa's been noticing during their shared lab class, or anything.

Stomach squirming with delight, Teresa taps her number into Brenda's phone. She names herself “Teresa Swagnes,” because she is cool.

She throws it back, blinking when Brenda catches it one-handed.

“I really should call you next time we play,” Teresa says, impressed.

Brenda grins lazily, rolling onto her stomach and kicking up her feet. “Please do,” she drawls. “Jorge is a grumpy old fart, and I get tired of having no one else for company.”

They're quiet a moment. Then Brenda grabs a blanket from the magical bottomless Mary Poppins bag that is her bed, and lobs it at Teresa's head.

“Stop shivering,” she commands. “You're making me cold.”

“Oh, really?” Teresa asks. A thin smile curves her lips. She grabs her cold, wet shirt. "You think me shivering is making you cold?”

Brenda narrows her eyes. “I don't like your tone, girlie.”

Teresa raises her eyebrows. “Well, I don't like wearing these wet clothes.”

Brenda frowns with confusion—then Teresa lobs her snow-caked shirt across the room, and Brenda's eyes go wide wide wide just a second before it lands on her back.

She shrieks loudly enough that someone's probably jumping to call 911, and scrambles to fling the shirt away. Teresa waits, gauging her reaction—they don't know each other that well, after all, but when inspiration strikes...

The seconds she pauses trying to get a read on Brenda's amusement-versus-anger level costs her any advantage she might've had.

Closing the space between the beds faster than Teresa's eyes can follow, Brenda launches herself directly into Teresa's personal space and proceeds to—“Oh my _god_!” yelps Teresa—shove the weaponized shirt down the front of Teresa's tank top.

It's fucking cold. It's still fucking dripping. Teresa is rigid for a moment, brain too numb with _cold cold cold_ to even register that sweet jesus, _Brenda's hand was just down her tank top_.

Then she snaps out of it, yanking the source of the terrible coldness from between her boobs. “ _Oh my god_ ,” she repeats, voice tight. She glowers at Brenda. “You,” she says, a deadly note in her voice, “are going to regret that.”

With a cackle that wouldn't be out of place from a super-villain, Brenda scampers from the bed, dodging the shirt Teresa throws at her. She swoops down, grabs something from the floor—Teresa can't tell what until her own wet, smelly socks are in her face.

“Augh!” she yells, swiping them away and leaping up from the bed. Brenda is already darting away, laughing. “You're gonna get it!” Teresa promises, even though Brenda is already yanking open the door and racing out into the hallway.

Teresa chases her.

What other option is there? Her honor has been tarnished. By wet socks.

Brenda runs down the hallway in socked feet, tossing smiles over her shoulder when she checks to see if Teresa's gaining. Teresa follows, her own feet bare, her skin still half numb with cold.

Brenda runs, and runs, and when she reaches the end of the hallway she throws open the door—the door that leads outside—and she runs right through it.

Teresa hesitates on the doorstep, looking down at her bare toes. She weighs the importance of catching Brenda and shoving her face in the snow against the horror that stepping out there will inflict upon her feet.

Realizing she's no longer being pursued, Brenda stops and turns to face Teresa, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised.

“You gonna come get me?” she taunts. Her dark eyes glitter with the reflection of the snow that covers the ground and the scattered trees, bright white-blue even in the growing dim of a winter early evening.

If Teresa had less control of herself, she thinks she might growl, or stomp her foot, or something to that effect. She looks down at her naked feet, knowing even as she imagines the awful stinging cold that she's going to go for it anyway.

“I hate you,” she tells Brenda. At that, Brenda lets out a full-throated laugh that's almost enough to make Teresa say ' _no, wait, I don't hate you—I think I'd like to make out with you, actually._ ' But no. Teresa is controlled, so instead she takes a deep breath, squeezes her hands into fists, and charges out across the snow, sucking in a big rush of freezing air as the snow bites at the nerves in her feet and the air chills the bare skin of her arms.

Brenda takes off running again, feet slipping in the slick snow as she rushes away from Teresa down the open field outside the back door. She's fast, but Teresa is determined. Her feet are already burning with cold; she pumps her legs faster.

There's cold air brushing her cheeks and snow attacking her feet and Brenda is laughing, just out of reach—and then she's not out of reach anymore, she's right there, and with a final lunge, Teresa crashes into her and sends them both tumbling to the ground in a freezing, wet, snowy heap.

Neither of them are at all dressed to be rolling around outside in this weather. Teresa's wearing jeans at least, but her tank top does nothing to protect her from the vicious nip of the snow. Brenda's sweatpants and t-shirt are soaked in seconds.

“So,” Teresa says slowly, “this may not have been a great idea.”

Brenda swats snow at her; it sprays over her in a wave of fluff. Very cold fluff.

“Maybe not,” she admits. “But we're out here now, right?”

“What do you mean—?”

Teresa's answer comes in the form of a pink-cheeked girl looming over her, pinning her shoulder to the ground, and—less pleasantly than the rest of that—shoving a handful of snow into her face.

Teresa spits, rolls, and tackles Brenda into the snow.

There is struggling, and thrashing, and a painful knee to the stomach and a less-painful hand to the boob, and snow gets generally everywhere. Teresa gains the upper hand long enough to pile a double handful of snow onto Brenda's face; then Brenda wrestles her to the ground, and Teresa finds herself with snow down her back. She growls, and knocks Brenda down again, and piles snow into her sweatpants until Brenda is shrieking with laughter and begging her to stop.

“Oh my god,” she laughs, red-faced. “Oh my god, stop, I surrender—take my money, I swear to god, I'll give you Jorge's candy stash, just stop—!”

Teresa stops. She's not cruel. She sits back on her heels, snow soaking through her jeans where her knees rest on the ground.

They stare at each other for a moment, Brenda on her back on the ground, Teresa kneeling above her. Their breaths hit the air in icy puffs of white. Brenda's chest rises and falls heavily.

A small giggle escapes her lips. Teresa's lips twitch.

“This was definitely a bad idea,” Teresa says, but she's grinning.

Brenda swats snow at her again. “I think it was a great idea,” she argues.

“Really,” Teresa asks flatly.

“Yes, really,” Brenda says. She pushes herself up to sitting, dropping her hands in her lap. Her arms are red with cold; snow clings to the cotton of her shirt. Her short hair is ruffled, the dampness of the snow alternately sticking it to her forehead and tufting it up from the top of her head.

Her eyes twinkle with amusement. “See,” she says, “'cause now I get to take you back inside and offer you my shower and some of my clothes, and then I get to pretend I'm still cold as an excuse to share a blanket with you.” Brenda smiles, confident as anything.

Teresa has to blink a few times before she can accept that this is actually reality. Like, it's not every day that a cute girl propositions her so boldly—it makes sense that she's a little caught off guard.

She regains her composure quickly, because composure and Teresa are seldom without each other. “That's pretty presumptuous of you,” she says, raising her eyebrows. “How do you know I'll fall for that?”

Brenda snorts as she gets to her feet. She sticks out a hand to help Teresa up. “Are you telling me my brilliant plan isn't going to work?”

Teresa accepts the helping hand, grasping Brenda's palm and pulling herself upright. Standing close to each other, Teresa is a few inches taller. It would be easy, she thinks, to lean down and kiss Brenda's lips, bright with cold.

“I never said it wouldn't work,” Teresa says, voice quiet.

Brenda grins. “Good,” she says curtly. “Then let's get back inside.” She tugs Teresa along behind her, and Teresa follows, feeling a little overwhelmed. Brenda tosses a cheeky smile back over her shoulder. “I have a girl to seduce.”

**Author's Note:**

> btw random backstory headcanon about how brenda ending up rooming with an older guy—it was initially a housing department screw up, but when brenda walked into her room the first time, jorge nearly got her in the eye with a dart, and she decided she liked him, and then she got him an actual dartboard and hung it somewhere _other than the freaking door_ and he decided he liked her too, and by the time housing had a solution they were faced with a very determined brenda and jorge, who of course are very ~~threatening~~ convincing, so things stayed the way they were. brenda and jorge complain about each other a _lot_ , but honestly brenda might burn the school down if she was given a different roommate.
> 
> [on tumblr](http://candycanekira.tumblr.com/post/104634378251/for-runnieundies-and-merrygladers-tmrwishlists)


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